I am currently working on a Diary Freestyle Libre App for my most liked flash glucose measuring tool. Here are some photos of the development work. Needs some improvement but gets close to what I intend to do with a Freestyle Libre App.

Freestyle Libre App – A diary App

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There is no such thing as a (carb-) free lunch? After trying Dreamfield Low Carb Pasta with unsatisfying results I tried a new low carb pasta brand “Pasta alla Eva”. They claim to have less than 5g of carbs in 100g (uncooked )- too good to be true.

All in all this should be around 15g of carbs – a joke if you look at the full plate of pasta:

Low Carb Pasta – Yummy

One of the rare occasions where the pasta sauce has more carbs than the pasta themselves 🙂 .The pasta needed to be cooked for 15mins.

How did the low carb pasta taste?

Not bad – a bit too firm (dreamfield pasta tastes pretty much like the real thing) but okay. Maybe they can tweak their recipe a bit but I liked it. For me it is trillions of times better than shirtaki konjak noodels which I simply hate for their consistence.

If you were blindfolded you would recognize the difference to normal pasta – maybe the best way to describe is like a bit undercooked.

Wow, I did not expect that. Yesterday I moved quite a lot .15000 steps, That is about three times of my daily average. And I ate late because I was on a workshop in the evening and was not able to eat beforehand.

Today I had my first Freestyle Libre Sensor removed. I had no problems. Just pulled it away like a plaster. It did not even hurt a bit. No bleeding, no allergy. Just some residue from the glue which can be easily removed with alcohol.

Freestyle Libre Sensor removed

I wonder what kind of funky superglue they use. 14 days without any sticking problems. I was bathing, showering and sweating. Okay, not too much sweating… but anyway.

Freestyle Libre Sensor Removed- and Replaced

I put on my new (second) sensor. No pain not even a bit. I will activate it after 24 hours with the Freestyle Libre Reader. Some users described a ramp up of the values during the first day which can be skipped if the sensor is activated after 12 to 24 hours .

The 14d sensor measuring time starts after activation.

What happens to the old sensor?

Freestyle Libre – Old Sensor Timeout Message

The removed freestyle libre sensorkeeped running after the 14d activation time. I do not know what exactly was still working and what not but the data kept changing. The Libre Reader did not read any information (or at least does not display it). But reading it with an NFC reader there are still values changing. After appx. 12h the sensor stopped updating. It can still be read as the NFC part does not need any external power.

So for my next sensor I will use the extra running time for experiments without having any danger of destroying it.

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After wearing my Freestyle Libre Abbott for now more than a week here are my first results. And I was REALLY surprised about some findings:

the Libre is reliable. I had only one time when it said I had to wait 10 mins. That is okay.

it measures WHOLE BLOOD GLUCOSE not plasma glucose. This is important as a lot of finger glucometers measure plasma. And plasma values read about 10 to 12% higher.
A lot of people complain about the Abbott Freestyle Libre displaying too low values. This might be due to the whole – plasma difference:
Above: plasma glucose Below: whole blood glucose from the Freestyle Libre Abbott

the reader has an inbuilt finger glucose meter

the sensor glue is reliable. I had no problems until now and I do see no lifting or skin irritation.

setting the sensor did NOT hurt . Really.

it is easy to setup.

I could measure a lot of food and found some really surprising things about my metabolism. Like the magic of potato salad and that I can walk away glucose. And I mean WALKing not jogging.

glucose trends are WAY more helpful than single measurements.

you can measure a bazillion times if you like. Okay, data is updated only every minute. But I did 90 measurements on my best day :-). That is pretty close to a bazillion.

the sensor holds eight hours of data without downloading to the reader. Which is not really a problem anyway because when I wake up the first thing I do is check my glucose graph.

what really surprised me: I got very low glucose levels (below 70) during one night. As a Type Two without insulin shots I did not expect that.

sensor cost of appx 60 Euros is high but worth it. I will surely buy new sensors to continue my food tests.

To make things easy and reproducible I chose to open a can of french precooked lentils with sausages (I live close to the french border and sometime buy food there – uhm and wine…).
Conveniently they put the nutrition values for one person on the label: 33g of carbs (see NB below).

Result for foods high in carbs – Lentils

Blood Glucoses from Lentils

Here are the results from the Freestyle Libre Flash Glucose Meter: now that looks very nice: a BG rise of only 18 mg/dl from 34g of carbs.

NB: in some countries (like US) the total carb value does contain the fiber amount as well. I do not know how the french are doing it but even if I subtract fiber from total carbs – for 23g of carbs this is still a gentle rise.

“Heating the rice — as rice dishes are normally consumed in hot dishes — can melt the crystals and make them less resistant to digestion.”

Well okay I had some leftover rice from last saturdays test so I decided to give resistant starch another try. I ate 200g of white basmati which contains appx. 60g of carbs (in my first test I ate half of this ammout and gave the second half to my girlfriend). Nothing was added. Just the pure rice (I did not want to have the vinegar effect interfering with the resistant starch ),

Cold resistant starch rice

After the usual delay my blood glucose went up. And it went UP. AND IT WENT UP:

FreeStyle Libre – Resistant Starch Tes

Holy Maccaroni! After my BG went over 200 I decided to briskly walk away my glucose as I do not want to stay too at such high levels. It worked and now I am back below 140 which is my current after meal maximum goal.

Resistant Starch Rice (cold)

Resistant Starch Rice – Science Fiction?

Here are my conclusions of this experiment:

“Resistant starch” rice (like I prepared it) does not help to keep my blood sugar low. It had the same effect as ordinary rice.

I can walk away the peaks of BG spikes pretty easily. No jogging required – brisk walking is enough.

I have to keep in mind that the Freestyle Libre has a 5 to 15min delay compared to the real blood glucose. I will have to start my counter-walking earlier if I want to stay below 200 mg/dl.

Resistant Starch Foods – Basmati Rice

I prepared one (raw) cup of basmati rice, two and a half cups of water, salt and two teaspoons of coconut oil. Cooking time 18 min. Rice was cooled down and put in the fridge for >14h.
Next day I prepared an asian inspired “resistant goreng” with the following ingredients (sorry, the tool only works in German):

Resistant Starch Goreng

I used only half of the rice for cooking and after checking the carbs and cals I decided to eat only half of the prepared meal (~ 400kcal and 38g carbs) – so eating only a quarter of the prepared rice. My girlfriend ate the rest of the meal- and liked it 🙂 .

Result

Resistant starch basmati rice gave me a rise of appx. 68 mg/dl from 38g of carbs. The “real” value will be higher as the Libre sensor reads 10 to 20% lower than my finger glucometer.

The rise of BG is not lower than what I would have expected from untreated rice.

Thinking about it – the preperation of rice with oil is surely something that is quite common. So if this had any positive influence some Type 1 diabetics would surely would have recognized this.

Conclusion

In this one person single meal study on resistant starch foodsresistant starch rice did not show any beneficial influence on BG compared to normal rice.

I decided to at least two tests as blood glucose seems to behave somewhat fuzzy. So I will retest this with some of the basmati rice leftovers (maybe cold rice salad) but do not expect any improvement.

UPDATE: I did a retest and had a much less rise in BG. I will keep an eye on this.

Another big surprise. I regularly use Xylitol (Xucker) instead of table sugar because it has low or no impact on blood glucose. Or is said to have. But there seems to be some “xylitol side effects”.

Today with my morning coffee and with the help of my freestyle libre I checked the influence of four heaped teaspoons of Xylitol in my morning coffee (together with one teaspon of low fat cream). And I nearly fell off my chair: it raised my BG from 123 to 171 mg/dl (fingerpick, freestyle 146)!

What kind of xylitol side effects are that?

I will redo this experiment tomorrow. Maybe the lowfat cream had some negative influence. I hope so.

Rats, so I have to wait another hour for my BG to go down before I can have my breakfast…

Four heaped tablespoons of xylitol in my morning coffee. What strange kind of xylitol side effects is this?